Residents of Gypsy Hill Road came home to a grim sight Thursday at about 5 p.m. A dead deer lay in the road.

The dead deer was positioned next to a large trash bag that was full of ice, ice that was melting. That made it appear to be a deliberate dumping of both the ice and the deer, although Pacifica police say the deer may have naturally died there.

It’s not the first time residents of that road off Sharp Park have been the victims of illegal dumping. Just a few days before, someone had dumped a whole pile of tires there. In the past, trash has been dumped along the road. Nothing, however, was as upsetting as the sight of a dead deer.

Clorinda Campagna, 81, a resident of the road, was already dealing with the tires. She planned to remove them one by one and take them to the recycling yard in her car.

But she was stymied when she tried to take care of the deer removal.

She called the Peninsula Humane Society and was told it could not pick up the deer because it was located on a private road.

She called the Pacifica Police Deopartment to report the illegal dumping. A police officer who came to the scene said he’d call Pacifica’s Department of Public Works to take the deer away. But when Public Work’s personnel arrived on Friday morning, they left without the deer. They said they could not take it away from private property. Here’s the catch — if it were on public property, it would have been picked up by the Peninsula Humane Society.

By Friday, the deer had been gnawed at overnight by wildlife and it was an even more gristly and unsettling sight.

“Residents on private roads pay taxes, too,” an upset Campagna said on Friday. “It was a health hazard for it to stay there so long. I’m afraid someone or some other animal will get sick from touching that deer. I can’t control the behavior of people on Gypsy Hill Road. The police officer said he’d love to have a camera up there to record activity. He was appalled and angry. We are all putting in an alarm system. We don’t feel safe up here. It’s not right that people have no respect for private property, or for that matter, public property. There’s always trash being cleaned up by someone else.”

The Peninsula Humane Society said Campagna should call a pest control company to correctly dispose of the deer. Van Ocampo, director of Department of Public Works, suggested Campagna call a private hauler. Both options would have cost Campagna money. She was given two prices for the removal — $200 from a hauling company and $400 from a tallow company that would have used parts of the deer.

“The Peninsula Humane Society will get animals dead or alive if it’s on a public street, but not on a private road,” Campagna complained.

That has to do with the type of contract the city has with the Peninsula Humane Society (PHS), said PHS spokesperson Scott Delucchi.

The city pays about $250,000 a year to PHS for animal control services, but those services are limited to what is in the contract and the contract doesn’t cover private property.

“We are not contracted to pick up dead animals on private property,” Delucchi said. “That is not one of the services that is paid for. Most cities want to pay us less, but still get more services. The cities say the contract is expensive, but we say it’s inexpensive. Our response time to public property is outstanding. We feel for her. It’s unsettling for anyone to see a dead animal on private property. The city could come to us and see how much it would add to the contract, but I don’t think cities want to add anything to the contract. They want to have less services right now.”

For a brief time, Campagna thought her problems were over when the Pacifica police officer came to her home.

“I commend the police officer. He did his job. He called Public Works to remove it. I expected it to be removed early Friday morning, but it wasn’t,” she said. “They used their time and taxpayers’ money in gas going up here.”

Director of Public Works Van Ocampo said the police officer made a mistake calling Public Works to remove the deer from private property.

“We cannot spend public resources going to private property,” Ocampo said. “I have straightened out the misinformation. Even though the police officer made a mistake, we cannot rectify the mistake by making another mistake by removing it. We do not have the staff to do this, if it is not a life-threatening issue. If a tree were about to fall, we’d take care of it, but not if it’s a cleanup.”

Pacifica police captain Fernando Realyvasquez said the police department is not investigating the matter.

“It’s suspicious,” he said. “With the bag of ice, that puts a short time frame on it, but we have no information about how the deer got there. With no witnesses, it’s just another dead deer.”

In the end, Campagna had the deer covered with dirt. She and her family plan to bury it.

“How many more Pacifica citizens live on a private road or a rural road and do not have services from public works and the PHS?” asked Campagna. “We should all be aware of this dumping in our city. This should not be happening.”